As digital marketing specialists we’re always looking to increase your brand’s reach and recognition. One of the most potent ways in which we can do this is through influencer outreach. The world of social media has seen the rapid and steady rise of the high profile sharer. Whether their area of expertise and visibility lies in restaurants, healthy eating, lifestyle or technology, an endorsement from a third party is incredibly valuable. Influencer outreach introduces your brand to an audience of thousands, or in some cases millions, of potential customers – by a voice they already trust and admire. It’s all about aspiration!

Incredible credibility

When an unaffiliated third party gives your product or service the seal of approval, it lends a weight of credibility that is exceedingly hard to achieve on your own or through more traditional advertising streams. You can talk about the wonders of your brand until you’re blue in the face, but there’s a tangible sense of validation from an influencer’s endorsement.

Influencers are, well – influential! They work hard to build a relationship with their audience and create a bond of trust, whether it’s in talking about personal struggles or by sharing carefully curated snapshots of their life. They represent an authentic voice that their followers will sit up and listen to, so it makes sense that a mention of your product or service from them will result in positive things for your brand.

Turn up the volume

Choose your influencer carefully and you could increase your brand’s visibility by an incredible amount. Through nurturing collaborations with the right influencers you’ll gain access to the audience who follow their advice and insights through their social media platforms and blogs.

We spend time nurturing relationships with our influencer contacts and also adding to our list. One of the most important things when using influencers is that the content in which your brand is featured fits comfortably within their existing feed. Choose a foodie blogger to talk about your craft business and the effect won’t be the same. Firstly, you won’t be reaching the right audience. Second of all it will jar their fans and look inauthentic. Although there are strict codes as to letting followers know when something is a promotional post, you do still want it to look likely that this is something that your influencer would be delighted to have in their life even if they weren’t being asked to talk about it.

It’s all very well finding an influencer who has thousands of followers, but they have to be the right fit for your brand and you for them. We are experienced in providing the right influencers for the job and actively seek new contacts all the time. Another vital factor to take into consideration when choosing your influencers is their level of engagement. While some may have a high level of followers, they might not get many ‘likes’. Users aren’t as keen to interact with a celebrity as they are with someone with whom they can identify more, or who is more likely to respond. The lower the level of engagement, the less visibility the posts will have.

An important consideration is the importance of the ‘micro-influencer’ as opposed to the ‘influencer’. Micro-influencers are those who have between 1000-10,000 followers. Although their follower base may be narrower than a celebrity influencer there are several advantages to this.

Firstly, there’s more perceived intrinsic authenticity from micro-influencers – baldly put, users are more likely to believe that they have in fact tried and enjoyed that chocolate box you sent them.

Secondly, as many micro-influencers are more tightly focused on their content, you are able to be more targeted with the audience to whom you wish to speak.

Thirdly, they’re more affordable and better value for money. Celebrity endorsements are costly while micro-influencers are far more manageable, especially if your business is on the smaller side. Research shows that while influencers with over 10,000 followers average ‘likes’ for 2.5% of their promotional posts, this rises to 8% for the smaller micro-influencers. They’ve also been shown to drive 22.2% more conversations per week than the average customer.

Cost effective and effective

While many influencers charge for their time and on a per post basis, depending on your budget, this is a more realistic and often more effective means of advertising than many other more traditional forms. In fact, research has shown that this type of advertising activity can generate up to 11x the ROI of traditional advertising such as TV, print and desktop ads. In fact influencer outreach generates an average of $6.50 for every $1 spent. Source: Social Media Today

Make it work

Having a clear strategy is key to a successful campaign. Whether you’re after conversions, engagement, lead generation or just to grow your following, it’s vital that you communicate with the influencer and to work out a plan together so that it works for both sides. Determine the performance metrics that your team can monitor the campaign’s effectiveness and progression. That way you can make adjustments as necessary and be clear as to what works well and what doesn’t.

Ways we’ve made it work

PR events (to develop new relationships with press, bloggers and other influencers)

In our work with Godiva we worked with @London on a campaign collaborating with Eurostar. The brief was to tell a story over 24 hours that would follow the @London team on a mission from the Godiva shop in St.Pancras International to their chocolate factory in Belgium, bring back some chocolate and use it to create chocolate dipped strawberries for their influencer friends back in London.

We worked closely with the @London team to identify the right tone for the piece and to coordinate all the content and subsequent engagement. This was a big campaign and their video posts on Instagram attracted 97.8k views.